Police Maintenance the Second City Way

Chicago is known by many as Ameri­ca's "Second City." When it comes to automotive maintenance, however, the Chicago Police Department's Automo­tive Maintenance Division ranks second to none.

In fact, so well respected are the pro­grams and procedures used by the di­vision that almost every state has sent representatives to observe the division's workings. Representatives from Europe and Asia also have come to Chicago to gain an insight into what makes the di­vision tick. The man responsible for overseeing the division's operation is George A. Rupprecht. It is Rupprecht's responsibility to establish the mainte­nance programs and procedures for the 1,907 vehicles used by the police de­partment.

During 1967, the department's ve­hicles amassed a staggering total of 55,000,000 miles of almost constant driving. This is equivalent to 2,200 times around the earth. A majority of the vehicles are driven 24 hours a day and by as many as two and three oper­ators a day. Despite this great amount of mileage, and despite the built-in hazards of police work, the division's operating cost for the entire fleet for 1967 was .0428 cents per mile.

Automotive Fleet talked with Rup­precht and gained some insight into how he operates one of the most effi­ciently run maintenance departments in the world.

Q. How is your automotive main­tenance division set up?

A. "We divide the entire fleet in­to four preventative maintenance installations which are strategically located throughout the city. That way we have 475 vehicles out of each garage instead of attempting to put our 1,900 vehicles in one ga­rage. Two of the installations are city owned and the two others are rented. We are building a replace­ment for one of the stations and hope to have it ready by February 1969. Our division is in operation 24 hours a day, seven clays a week."

Q. What is the division's annual budget?

A. "The over-all budget is $5,-000,000. Of that, $1,000,000 is for personnel and the other $4,000,000 is for gas, oil, tools, shop equip­ment and new vehicles.

Q. What areas of the total fleet op­eration come under your direct supervision?

A. "We have no control over what type of vehicles comprise our fleet. We also have no control over the number of vehicles in the fleet. That, of course, is up to the Super­intendent of Police. We are only liable for the operation costs of the fleet. And that operation consists of gas, oil, repairs', tires, parts, pre­ventative maintenance, towing, washing, etc. These are what we call operating expenses. Incidental­ly, these expenses also include acci­dents. Last year it cost us $435,899.86 to repair either accidents or incidents that caused damage to department vehicles."

Q. Are your vehicles categorized in any way?

A. "We have our vehicles broken down into eight classes or brackets. Bracket One is a uniform, six-cylin­der patrol vehicle that anyone can see on the beats 24 hours a day. Bracket Two is the unmarked cars. Bracket Three is a squadrol. These are vehicles that have a truck chas­sis of 7,500 GVW and will carry eight prisoners and two police per­sonnel. They also have demount­able bodies. When the cab and chassis wear out we replace it and transfer the body. In five years, this type of operation will save us $250,-000. All of our trucks, not just the squadrol, have demountable bod­ies. We will keep a body any where from five to 10 years. Chassis some­times wear out in 12 to 15 months. Bracket Four is a van or truck. There is no weight limitation in this bracket. Bracket Five is a three wheel motorcycle or serv-a-car. Bracket Six is the solo or two wheel motorcycles. Bracket Seven is what we call the undercover vehicle. Most of these vehicles are secured from the pounds. We have a great number of trucks in this bracket. Just because you see a laundry truck on the street doesn't mean that it's not a police truck. Bracket Eight is the eight-cylinder or ex­pressway or radar car."

Q. How many types of vehicles are assigned to the various groups mentioned above?

A. "There are 791 uniform cars for patrol, 712 unmarked cars, 68 squadrols, 74 trucks and vans, 197 three-wheel vehicles, 10 two-wheel motorcycles, 18 undercover ve­hicles and 38 expressway or radar cars. The make of passenger car breakdown on June 30, 1967, was 835 Ply mouths, 255 Fords, 428 Chevrolets, 1 Lincoln, 2 Cadillacs, 6 Mercurys, 33 Dodges, 57 Interna­tionals and 31 miscellaneous under­cover cars we don't talk about."

Q. What type of preventative maintenance schedule does your division follow?

A. "Under data systems, we have seven categories of repairs at the four PM stations. They are brakes, body, chassis, engine, pre­ventative maintenance, transmis­sion and electrical. We perform 26 operations of PM at the four ga­rages of which about 60 per cent are visible. Included in our PM work is relining of brakes, replace­ment of mufflers, tailpipes, leaking radiators, water pumps, adjusting tappets and changing plugs. We do not open an engine for major re­pairs. All our major repairs are sub­let through 33 outside vendors. We also service and test transmissions. If we determine same is not per­forming correctly it is sent out for major repairs.

"We use two guides to establish our servicing schedule. Number One, we take the manufacturer's recommendations and cut them in half. Because police and taxi work is such an exacting duty, 60,000 miles on our vehicles is like 120,000 miles on an average auto. There­fore, if 6,000 miles is recommended for a lubrication, it is performed at 3,000. If factory recommends drain­ing the automatic transmission (90 per cent of the department's cars are so equipped) say at 24,000 miles, it is performed at 12,000. Secondly we determine whether maintenance is due by reading the tires."

Q. How can a tire be "read''?

A. "We have two trucks, similar to soft drink trucks, which operate throughout the city. These trucks carry spare tires for replacement at our 19 tire remount stations. Our police personnel are responsible for changing flats. When a flat occurs the operator of the vehicle immedi­ately takes it to the nearest remount station for a new or a repaired tire. The policeman will get a tire that will match the depth of the rubber on his tire. if he has a new tire, he gets a new one. If his tire is 50 per­cent worn, he will get a 50 per cent tire. Some of the larger remount stations have 100 tires of various sizes. Each tire hub is painted a different color to match various types of vehicles, therefore, any re­mount station employee simply takes a colored hub off the rack that matches the color of the hub brought in for replacement. On ex­pressway or radar cars, we will not permit a tire to go less than 5/32nds of tread wear, over-all, any tire less than 3/32nds in the depart­ment is replaced. There is a tag on every   tire.   When a policeman brings a tire in for replacement at a remount station, he fills in his ve­hicle number, date, unit number and mileage. When the tire is brought in for repairs to our main garage, the foreman of the tire shop, who is a police officer, will READ that tire. He will determine if the. vehicle from which tire was removed had excessive tow-in, tow-out, or whether a wheel alignment is needed. The foreman READS the tire like a doctor reads X-ray."

Q. When is most of your PM work done?

A. "Our first watch, which is from midnight to 8 a.m., is the prime time for performing PM work. However, each of our PM in­stallations can turn out about three PM vehicles in an hour. If a ve­hicle comes in that is not fit to run, the operator will be given a pool vehicle. We then, keep the vehicle and the repairs are performed dur­ing the day or second watch (8:00 AM to 4:30 PM). There are approx­imately 100 pool vehicles that are available. These are vehicles that in actuality have been traded but are vehicles that we can use until the vendor or successful bidder re­places them with new vehicles."

Q. Is there a mileage limitation as to how far a police vehicle may be driven?

A. "We make a demand charge on a squad car or any passenger car of 60,000 miles. On a squadrol or truck we make a demand charge of 75,000 miles. On a three-wheel ve­hicle, serv-a-car or two-wheel solo motorcycle we put a 50,000 mile demand. On V-8 expressway cars we make a 75,000 mile demand charge. This is because V-8's, ex­pressway or radar cars are mostly fast, easy miles. We don't care so much about the time factor for these miles. However, we do not keep a vehicle in the fleet for over four years because of the trade-in value. Detective units will run out 60,000 miles in four years. Patrol units, however, will run out 60,000 miles in 14 to 18 months. Squadrols usually accumulate 75,000 miles in 12 months.

Q. What are your replacement pol­icies?

A. "We use the 60,000 mile fig­ure as a demand charge. We break up the 60,000 miles in monies that the vehicle costs us in increments. We use twelve 5,000 mile incre­ments. If the vehicle costs us $1,800 on a trade, we will break the $1,800 amount down in twelve increments of $150. Therefore, if the vehicle has, say 50,000 miles, it has two increments of $300 left. If we know that it is going to cost us $600 to repair it, you can readily see it will not pay to repair it. We trade the car to the vendor. The trade is figured on the bid."

Q. How much of a parts inventory does your division carry?

A. "The parts for the division are purchased by the Equipment and Supply Section. They maintain parts bins in our four PM installa­tions and it is up to them to make sure that we do not have an over­stocking or run short of parts. Most generally, the stock record card will reflect enough supply for 90 days, using the previous years and num­ber of various types of vehicles as a criteria.

Q. Are purchases of new vehicles handled through your division?

A. "Chicago is bound by the Illi­nois Purchasing Act. This says that any city of 500,000 or more must have a purchasing agent. John Ward is Chicago's purchasing agent. He is responsible for the buying of everything the city uses from ink to carbon paper, typewrit­er ribbons, fire engines, trucks and police vehicles. It is my job to write up the vehicle specifications for the police department. I also do this for all equipment and parts used in the division. All contracts for the pur­chase of new autos and parts are awarded on bids to the low bidder. All in all, we purchase about 800 vehicles a year for the Department.

Q. What are the problems of spe­cial equipment?

A. "About 35 per cent of the items of a police car are special equipment. These, include heavy duty shocks, roll over bars, heavy duty radiator with fan shrouds, windshield washers high output al­ternators and of course, a beefed-up engine. We do not handle the maintenance of radios or electrical systems. That comes under a sepa­rate section, the Electronics Engi­neering Division. This division is also housed in our four PM instal­lations. We also have disc front wheel brakes on all cars ordered since the beginning of 1967. We find that the disc brakes give us less trouble than the brake drum. We also have some of our vehicles air-conditioned. We have 10 prison­er vans that hold 35 men each. The cab and the body of these are air-conditioned with separate systems. Most of our department's principal cars also are air-conditioned. An­other bit of special equipment that we are using is Plexiglas on the windshields of the squadrols.

Q. Do you use civilians in your di­vision?

A. "We have 30 civilian mechan­ics that belong to the Machinist Union. These men form the back­bone of our maintenance crew. We also have 17 greasers with one su­pervisor, and one foreman and one subforeman of machinists. There are 147 total personnel in the divi­sion of which 71 are policemen. Of the 30 mechanics, there is one in each PM installation who is what we call the street man. He has contact with the vendors to see that the work is performed right. We break the PM crews down into four-man sections. There is a lead man who is in charge of the other three. The lead man assigns job load.

Q. Have the warranty programs helped you in any way?

A. "The warranty has been a de­cided savings for us. The five years doesn't apply in our cases, because of early replacements but the 50,-000 miles does. To my way of thinking, there are few autos that won't give you 50,000 miles unless it has been abused. Since the warranty program has come into use there has been a savings in our repair ac­count of between $70,000 to $100,000 a year.

Q. What about 1967 operations?

A. "In 1967, for all vehicles serv­iced, our division performed 96,252 PM operations for brakes, mufflers, tailpipes, inspections, adjustments and minor repairs. There were 18,-640 crank cases drained, 4,276 air cleaners changed, 11,250 oil filters changed, 15,789 tires repaired, 14,-087 tires remounted and 2,819 tows. In all, there were 96,252 work or­ders processed by our PM installa­tions. There: also were 7,131 work-orders processed by outside vend­ors for major repairs. "During 1967 our division used 5,444,838 gallons of gasoline, averaging about 10 miles per gallon. We used 40,025 gallons of oil at a cost of 36 cents per gallon. We also spent $70,000 for new tires. Our monthly cost per vehicle during the entire year was $101.50. Our monthly mileage per vehicle was 2,250 miles per unit."

It is evident from a review of Rupprecht's operations why police departments from every corner of the globe have made it a point to visit the Chicago Police Depart­ment's maintenance facilities.